I’ve been getting a lot of questions about our multisite strategy for children’s ministry at 12Stone Church. Currently we have 3 campuses, with more on the way. The most common questions I get is, “what is our model for multisite?”

Before we talk about our model, let me identify the three main ways I see churches structuring their multisite children’s ministry and then I’ll explain our model and why.

I have observed three basic models for structuring your multisite children’s ministry.
1. Independent – This is where your multisite children’s ministries are actually autonomous ministries. Each campus has the freedom to choose their own curriculum & their own branding. Each campus has their own identity and creates their own separate environments for kids. Often times, there is very little collaboration between campuses. Whether it is intentional or not, there is not a lot of synergy across campuses. If a family moves from one campus to the next, they will have a different experience at each campus. It is basically like a separate church plant, not necessarily a multisite.
2. Centralized – This is where churches replicate their children’s ministry at each campus, typically under the direction of a central staff team. Each campus is identical to the original campus. Typically this happens when churches plant campuses of similar size want to create the exact same experience across campuses. The branding is the same, the environmental design is same, even the staff structure is the same. In this model, there is a lot of synergy across campuses.
3. Decentralized – This is where there is a transfer of authority from the central campus to each multisite. This is a move away from a single central staff/main campus to the other locations, thus granting each campus some autonomy. Some churches use this model to allow campuses to choose from a list of different curriculum options that are preapproved by the church. Still other churches use this model to share the same Children’s Ministries name, but there are different ministry directors who use different curriculum and have different themes.

Our approach at 12Stone is a hybrid of a centralized & decentralized model. I refer it to as a Collaborative Model. While our central staff is responsible for the overall direction, vision, systems, & philosophy of the children’s ministry across all campuses…the campus staff in charge of children’s ministry report directly to their Campus Pastor. In other words, I am not their boss. We are decentralized in that they don’t report to me at all. As the Children’s Pastor at 12Stone, my role is to lead the various teams through influence & coaching.

Each of our campuses use the same curriculum & collaborate together to create the best Sunday experience for kids and families. We do this through idea sharing, but allow the interpretation of those ideas to take place at each campus. In other words, we work together but allow each campus to play to their strengths. Our goal is not that each campus delivers an identical experience but that the DNA of 12Stone is consistent across our campuses.

So far this model has served us well. We meet twice a month with the children’s ministry staff from each campus in a meeting we call CREATE. This is where we design our Sunday services, share creative ideas, & monthly parent partnership tools. At the end of the day, we give each campus the freedom to implement the strategy so they maximize their strengths.

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My three children are fascinated with animals. They love to learn interesting facts about animals. Recently we checked out a book about baby animals that was full of amazing facts about all kinds of creatures. One of the discoveries that I found most interesting had to do with baby ducks and how they imprint.

When baby ducks hatch, they imprint on the first living creature they see that is larger than itself. Whether it’s another duck, a dog, a cow, or a person, baby ducks thinks it is their mother and they believe that they are its baby. And you thought this kind of thing only happened on “Tom and Jerry” cartoons? But it is true, God created baby ducks to imprint on another creature so that it is always the first thing the duckling thinks about and the most important being in the duckling’s world. Ducklings look to them for protection, provision, and to teach them how to live.

#1 THING WE DO

As I read this, I thought that this should be the #1 thing we do in Children’s Ministry. Our role is help kids imprint on their Heavenly Father. In Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Moses tells us to impress, or imprint, our children with a love for God.

Love the Lord Your God. As we lead children to imprint upon God, we are teaching them to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. This teaches them the basis to know who God is and what God is like.

God Takes First Place. They will see God as the most important being in the world and He will be the first thing they think about. When kids imprint on God they begin to look to Him for protection, provision, and to teach them how to live.

#1 WAY WE DO IT

I believe Moses clearly lays out a plan to imprint children in our ministries with a love for God. He tells us to “impress them upon our children.” The Hebrew word here is shanan, which means “to instill by persistent instruction.” The idea is that in everything we do, we guide our children to love God and put Him first through persistent reinforcement.

Reinforcement And Retention. A recent study found that when we expose kids to a concept once in 30 days there is a 10% retention level. For example, if you’re only teaching a Biblical truth once in 30 days, your kids are only remembering 10% of what you teach them. On the other hand, the study found that if we review that material six times within a 30-day period kids will likely retain 90% of what we teach them.

Stick To The Theme. A few years ago we started teaching the same theme for an entire month but approaching it using different Bible stories, songs, and activities each week. As you can imagine the practice of persistent reinforcement radically changed the way we do children’s ministry. We no longer concentrated on totally new material every week and then moving on to something different. Now once we teach a lesson we come back again a week later from a different angle, and back again another week, and back again another week for the entire month. The end result has been amazing! Our kids are remembering who God is and what God is like. They are learning to love God and give Him first place in their lives.

The challenge is to begin to practice persistent reinforcement in your ministry. According to Moses, our goal is not to impress children with a new Bible story each week, but rather it is to imprint them with a love for God.

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At 12Stone Church we often get asked, “How do you organize your elementary small groups?” Throughout our services we transition between large group & small groups at various times to discuss the Bible Story and maintain interaction within the groups. We want our small group to be 3D:

DO – This is our hands-on element. Our small groups make discoveries together, they learn truth together. The activities vary from week to week but the value is that they “do” something. It involves active learning.

DISCUSS – This is where we divide our groups 12-15 kids into groups of 3-5 kids to discuss what they did. They talk about ways to apply what they’ve learned. Our small group leaders serve as a facilitator of the discussion.

DEBRIEF – This is often driven from the stage by one of our cast members. We allow small groups to share some of their insight with the larger group. We also debrief by bringing the groups of 3-5 back into their larger group of 15 to share their collective learning.

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“All You Can Eat”. Many restaurants offer this culinary ritual by asking you to pay a flat fee of about $5.99 and then stuffing yourself on an never ending array of options…from fried chicken to egg rolls & salisbury steak to tacos. After 4 trips to the “food bar” it is then time to visit the “dessert bar” where you can pour hot fudge & sprinkles over anything that you can reach before scarfing it down.

What ALL these restaurants have in common is that the food is bad, the quality is cheap, and choices are endless.

The truth is that many of our churches have an “all you can eat” approach to the number of ministries we offer. We think that the if we offer something for everyone then everyone will come.

What actually happens is that the program is bad, the quality is cheap, and a lot of people don’t come. In other words, the variety is impressive but the impact is not.

At 12Stone Church, we have adopted a lean approach to ministry. In our children’s ministry we don’t have a VBS, a Wednesday night program, a sports ministry, a choir program, MOPS, Mother’s Day Out, and a handful of other things we could offer.

In our Children’s Ministry we focus our energy on Sunday large group experiences, small group environments, & partnering with parents. With this lean approach to children’s ministry, it still takes tremendous effort to do them well.

Our Executive Pastor, Dan Reiland, gives some excellent advice to move toward a lean and more robust ministry…

1. Don’t stand at your pulpit, brandish your Colt .45 and declare that you just shut down half the ministries in your church. Please. I don’t have any job openings.

2. Invest weeks or months thinking and praying with key leadership asking God what your focus needs to be.

3. Cast vision and teach the principle of lean ministry. Tell why you are leaning into it. (No pun intended.)

4. Once you know your focus, take six months to a year to s-l-o-w-l-y close down other ministries.

5. Keep casting vision. Tell success stories of primary ministries.

6. Develop relationships with ministries in your community and around the world that you don’t “own and operate” but can support. (Keep this group lean too.)

7. Remind people that they can do any ministry that they want, but that doesn’t obligate your church to do it, support it, advertize it, find a room for it, pay for it, and on the list goes.

8. Don’t feel like this limits you. You can start a new ministry any time you want. But be intentional. And when you do start a new ministry, be tough about considering what ministry you may need to drop.

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